The landscaping industry was recently rocked in late June with news of major firms The Brickman Group in Rockville, Md. and ValleyCrest Companies of Calabasas, Calif. merging to form a $2 billion company with 20,000 employees. The twist? Global private equity firm KKR, which purchased Brinkman in November 2013 for $1.6 billion, will have majority ownership of the new company. Another PE firm, MSD Capital, will have a significant minority interest.
Brickman employs more than 11,000 and provides landscape service for more than 30,000 properties. ValleyCrest Companies is listed as one of the 500 largest privately owned companies in the U.S. by Forbes magazine with 11,200 employees and 150 locations nationwide. According to company executives, the two merged companies will continue to operate as separate brands for the time being.
Though terms of the deal were not disclosed, the size of the companies means this merger dwarfs the next-largest landscaping industry deal, when ServiceMaster merged its commercial landscape business with LandCare USA in 1999 to form TruGreen LandCare, a merger valued at $250 million. Industry observers are interested to see how well the recent merger will operate in the market, as Brinkman is considered more of a process-oriented organization while ValleyCrest is more entrepreneurial.